Anish Kapoor: Mountain: Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, and Piano Nobile

Anish Kapoor’s monumental 2001 aluminium sculpture, Mountain, was exhibited at Museum Beelden aan Zee from 18 March 2016 until 5 February 2017. Organised in collaboration with Piano Nobile, this was the first time the sculpture had been on display in the Netherlands. Mountain was on view in the main room of Museum Beelden aan Zee, the dedicated sculpture museum of The Hague. The display opened to coincide with the second weekend of TEFAF Maastricht. Simultaneously, a trio of painted reliefs by Anish Kapoor were on show at the Rijksmuseum in dialogue with Rembrandt’s late works.

Composed of 120 water-jet cut layers, each just two centimetres thick, the structure rises a colossal 2.5 metres high and 5 metres wide. Executed with formidable precision, the layers lock together and yet convey the rugged, furrowed surface of a mountain formed from elemental rock. It possesses an imposing air of grandeur, an awe-inspiring evocation of seismic forces and tectonic movement.

Rather than a peak or ledge, a narrow rim opens onto the vertigo-inducing void of the internal structure. Kapoor has an ongoing fascination with negative space: “That’s what I’m interested in: the void, the moment when it isn’t a hole, it is a space full of what isn’t there”. The sublime and the infinite are paradoxically present in this nothingness. 

Mountain is a spectacular tour-de-force by Anish Kapoor, and the loan was an exciting addition to the collection of Museum Beelden aan Zee, the only museum in the Netherlands dedicated to sculpture